


A Floating Provider of Coconuts

by Kirsten



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-08-29
Updated: 2003-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-13 15:16:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirsten/pseuds/Kirsten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times when the <em>Pearl</em> is cruising and the waves are silent, when the stars seem to shine just for Jack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Floating Provider of Coconuts

There are times when the _Pearl_ is cruising and the waves are silent, when the stars seem to shine just for Jack. Times that are no better or worse than violent storms, but are clear enough for Jack to discard even the compass that doesn't seek out north. At times like that, Jack fancies he can see everything with his naked blackened eyes, all the myseries of the world and the heavens, and all the special places twixt the two.

This is not one of those times.

Jack is lying in an orchard of coconut trees, which means that he is on land. There's a slight breeze coming in off the Caribbean seas, and it makes the leaves rustle like the _Pearl's_ new sails. If he squints hard enough in the starlight, he can see them swaying. At the moment he's trying to imagine that the earth is rocking him and the leaves are still like the stars above, and the rum helps with that imagining but not much. Mostly he's trying to stay awake long enough to enjoy everything just a little bit more.

He wishes the _Pearl_ could grow coconuts. She's a beautiful ship, to be sure, beautiful for lots of reasons, the most important of which being that she's his, but as much as he loves her he doesn't think coconuts will ever spring fresh from her hold. Leastways, not in any reality but that which exists in his own head. It's a pleasant reality, that, full of magic and mayhem and romance. It's full of fucking, too, glorious fucking in the wind on deck, pushed right up against the helm. Many a happy hour, Jack has spent, imagining fucking with the _Pearl_ at his back.

Sometimes he dreams that her mast is a rose tree, and her sails are petals and her cannons are thorns, thorns that shoot from the stalk and scupper other vessels. The _Pearl_ , obviously, is a unique breed of rose.

Perhaps that's where Barbossa found all of his fresh apples, Jack thinks. The _Pearl's_ anchor drew juice from the ocean, and kept the apple tree fed. He laughs at the sky, and raises his bottle in a toast to the dead and drinks deeply until his throat burns and he can see nothing but blackness and the boiling suns behind his eyes.

Then he wakes, and it is daylight, and Will Turner is staring down at him with a look of surprise on his face. "What are you doing in our garden?" Will asks, and Jack takes a moment to decipher the question until the words sound like they belong to a language he speaks.

"Rum," Jack says, and Will seems slightly puzzled. Will is sometimes very stupid, Jack thinks, because rum is truly the answer to everything. He gestures expansively at the ground. "Rum. You know what I mean?"


End file.
